2023-07-04 17:09:08
Enter one in Caixaforum Barcelona and there it is, in the gloom, the hacked-up skull of a man in his forties. A modeled skull, covered in plaster and with seashells in the eye sockets. No lower jaw. The normal in Tell is -Sultan, ancient Jericho, 9,500 years ago. “Perhaps it was made to honor the deceased, but it probably came to symbolize ancestral figures in general,” we read. “He became an object of veneration,” he adds. Thomas A. Cummins, Head of international exhibitions at the British Museum and curator of ‘The Human Image. Arts, identities and symbolism’.
The Neolithic skull, unearthed in 1953 by the archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon is, in addition to one of the oldest portraits in the history of humanity, the starting point for an exhibition that explores 10,000 years of representation of the human being through 150 works . A journey from Jericho of 7,500 BC to the screen-printed montages of the Iranian Paraviz Tanavoli; from female figurines to culture Halaf to the masked faces of Antoni Tàpies. A journey through all cultures, civilizations and forms of expression that goes to show that, since art is art, man has made every effort to see himself and look at others. “It is one of the most persistent themes in the history of art,” emphasizes Elisa Durán, deputy general director of the La Caixa Foundation.
Also, adds Cummins, one of the most complex digestion. How else to delimit centuries and centuries of exhibition of the human body? How to sift through tons of modeled, sculpted, engraved, painted, and photographed representations? At Caixaforum, and based on a combination of funds from the British Museum and a dozen pieces from the La Caixa Foundation’s art collection, it has been decided to structure the exhibition into five large spaces: perfect beauty, portraits, the divine body, the political body and bodily transformation.
In the latter we find one of the most striking pieces of ‘The human image’: a eros statue of the Acropolis of Athens vandalized in the 4th (or 5th) century by the early Christians. “For them, nudity was something shameful, hence the nipples, stomach and genitals are scraped,” reports the poster. “The body is a way of transmitting ideas,” Cummins emphasizes. And, seen what has been seen, also trying to destroy them.
Detail of the painting dedicated to the Iranian wrestler Gholamreza Tajtí EFE
The norm, however, is the opposite: the body worship and the celebration of human beauty through Mochica busts, Egyptian paintings, Alexandrian heads and even the Greek sculpture of an old woman, “something unusual”, according to the curator. For out of the ordinary, however, the peculiar and colorful altar dedicated to the Iranian wrestler Gholamreza Tajti, national hero made an object of worship and surrounded by garlands and twinkling lights. Made up of comings and goings, cultural dialogues and artistic confrontations, the exhibition brings together nudes by Matisse, medals with Napoleon’s death mask, floating heads by Frank Auerbach, portraits by David Hockney, engravings by Goya, abstract bodies from the Cyclades, Obama and Trump badges, and Jerusalem death masks.
In the corridors, marble made flesh and art as a mirror of society. A relief of lovers from central India and a bust in memory of a couple from Palmyra who swore eternal love. “Sometimes, the important thing is the symbols, not the person himself,” the commissioner slips into the area dedicated to power. Behind him, a statue of Marcus Aurelius, a king of the Kuba dynasty, and portraits of Emperor Menelik II and King Farouk of Egypt. There is also, imposing, the canvas that Luis de Madrazo dedicated to Elizabeth the Catholic. “The political portrait is carefully conceived to evoke the idea of an all-powerful being”, emphasize those responsible for the sample. Not far away, in an adjacent glass case, a pair of pharaohs watch as a Old Houses porcelain shares space with a carving of the queen Victoria Made by a Yoruba artist.
Antiquity and modernity dialogue in ‘The human image’ EFE
In the section focused on ideal beauty, a single idea: everything is relative. Dürer engravings, Hittite ivory figurines, Maratti female nudes, the Japanese model Ohisa, an odalisque by Matisse… “Ideal beauty is a social construct that greatly affects people,” defends Cummins. And indeed, ideal beauty was not the same in 11th century Rajasthan, in 4th Dynasty Egypt or in 19th century Sierra Leone. When in doubt, the American Christopher Williams dismantles photographic conventions and commercial tricks in ‘Deconstruction of the beauty image’. By far, the claim of sexualization and glamor; close up, clips to fix the bra and a meticulous construction of the beauty.
Religious icons, tomb guardians carved from volcanic rock, scrawny ancestors from Rapa Nui, and a helper from the spirit world of West Papua connect the divine body with the ultimate department, that of transformation and, ultimately, death. Ritual masks, burial stelae, and a black basalt sarcophagus coexist here with the traumatized bodies of Leonard Baskin, a Ziggy Stardust etching courtesy of David Oxtoby, and Japanese devil masks.
The exposition ends but the question remains. “Why are we so fascinated by the human image?” Cummins asks. The answer, or one of them, is provided by his colleague Brendan Moore in the exhibition catalogue. “These pieces are embodiments of our knowledge of life with all its possibilities and limitations. They are projections of our humanity; models of who we think we are and what we aspire to be.
#years #hand #hand #human #body